Pickup rear-ends Norwalk school bus, then leaves scene

A pickup truck rear-ended a Norwalk City Schools bus transporting students Thursday afternoon.

The accident happened in the Norwalk High School parking lot near the baseball field.

The bus just had picked up students who finished their school day about 2:30 p.m. and the bus driver was preparing to turn onto Shady Lane Drive when an orange pickup truck rear-ended the bus. The pickup truck driver then backed up and drove away, according to an eye witness account.

“We were just getting ready to leave to go to the middle school like we normally do every day,” NHS freshman Valerie Roche said. “Then there was this bump. The bus driver thought it was the wind at first or something maybe; she didn’t know what it was.

“We found out (the truck) had just hit us. Its bumper was all messed up but we just had a dent on the bus. Then the bus driver was like, ‘I can’t believe she just pulled off looking like that.’”

The female student was driving an “orangish, reddish” truck and the bus driver took note of the license plate, Roche said.

Another bus was sent to get the middle school students and then the high schoolers were picked up after that.

The accident caused a 30-minute delay for the students.

Roche said she was feeling sick all day and was “annoyed” by the delay because she “just wanted to go home.” None of the students on the bus complained of any injuries, she added.

“Everybody was fine,” she said. “We just had a little bump.”

Superintendent George Fisk confirmed there were no injuries.

“It was just a minor accident with a student hitting the rear of one of the buses,” he said. “There were no injuries from the student driver or the students on the bus.”

Fisk said, though, that the student driver returned later after police and director of support services Kelly Ross identified her.

The Norwalk Police Department investigated the accident. However, the report was not available by press time, so additional details — including the student driver’s name — was not available.